Hard drive detection problem.....

  • Thread starter Thread starter intrepid_dw
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intrepid_dw

Hi...

I have a K75SA motherboard with a 5-yr old 13GB IBM hard drive in
it..as of late (say in the last month or two), the machine will
intermittently not detect the drive during POST - it simply comes up as
"Not Detected." There's a second drive in this machine that isn't being
detected, but I'm reasonably confident it is actually dead, so I'm not
too worried about that one.

Now, two things came to mind as the most likely possible sources of
this problem, and I'd appreciate some feedback on which is thought to
be more likely:

First, the drive itself may be failing - wouldn't be surprising given
its age, but even if the drive head had crashed, would it not at least
be able to identify itself to the system during POST? That's just a
firmware communication, isn't it?

Second - power supply failing. If the power supply on this unit, (just
a stock supply that came with the case, nothing special) is failing,
its entirely possible the drive isn't getting initialized in time to
respond to the motherboard's drive query.

If the machine detects the drive, it *always* comes up normally and
runs fine - only on reboot, and particularly on a cold
power-down/restart, do the intermittent non-detects occur, and not
always then. Its very much hit-and-miss.

Drive or power supply?

Thanks for your opinions and help,
David

Please reply to group - email is long since dead.
 
Hi...

I have a K75SA motherboard with a 5-yr old 13GB IBM hard drive in
it..as of late (say in the last month or two), the machine will
intermittently not detect the drive during POST - it simply comes up as
"Not Detected." There's a second drive in this machine that isn't being
detected, but I'm reasonably confident it is actually dead, so I'm not
too worried about that one.

Now, two things came to mind as the most likely possible sources of
this problem, and I'd appreciate some feedback on which is thought to
be more likely:

First, the drive itself may be failing - wouldn't be surprising given
its age, but even if the drive head had crashed, would it not at least
be able to identify itself to the system during POST? That's just a
firmware communication, isn't it?

Second - power supply failing. If the power supply on this unit, (just
a stock supply that came with the case, nothing special) is failing,
its entirely possible the drive isn't getting initialized in time to
respond to the motherboard's drive query.

If the machine detects the drive, it *always* comes up normally and
runs fine - only on reboot, and particularly on a cold
power-down/restart, do the intermittent non-detects occur, and not
always then. Its very much hit-and-miss.

Drive or power supply?
Click to expand...

Check the cables, make sure that they are seated firmly. Blow out any dust
while you've got the machine open.

Beyond that I'd check the power with a meter and see if it's within spec and
go from there. I've had more problems with bad power than bad disks by the
way.
 
As a matter of follow up, I opened up this machine to put in a new
stick of memory and, while I was there, disconnected the laptop hard
drive that I suspect had died. When I rebooted, the regular system
drive was detected almost instantly upon restart and across a couple of
subsequent reboots. Although this doesn't eliminate the possiblity that
the power supply is weakening, I think it strongly suggests that the
failure of one drive was inhibiting both drives on the same channel
from responding to an identity request. The machine is working just
fine now.

Thanks,
David
 
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